Atheist News Podcast 026: Thomas Effing Jefferson

Texas keeps threatening to secede from the union, and at this point you wouldn’t catch me trying to talk them out of it. The Texas Board of Education has just voted to remove Thomas Jefferson from the state history curriculum.

Thomas.

F*cking.

Jefferson.

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

If you aren’t an American, you probably already know who Thomas Jefferson is and can skip ahead a bit, but for those of you educated aboard this sinking ship of a country I live in, Thomas Jefferson was a humanist and enlightenment thinker that penned the Declaration of Independence, the Jefferson Bible and served as a US congressman twice, was the second governor of Virginia, was the US Ambassador to France and aided the French Revolution, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington, the second Vice President of the United States under John Adams and served as the third President of the United States during which time he bought the Louisiana Territory (which INCLUDED PARTS OF NORTHERN TEXAS, you fucking cocksuckers) from France, DOUBLING SIZE OF THE UNITED STATES. After that he founded the University of Virginia, which he designed himself.

And if after all that, if you still doubt he was a patriot, he DIED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY.

So, in honor of one of the most forward-thinking men in history, I have decided to against writing a summary for the Atheist News podcast this week. Rather, I would like to honor one of the greatest testaments to free-thought ever committed to paper: the US Declaration of Independence. I’m not going to post it in its entirety, in fact, I am not going to post anything from the actual Declaration; you can find that easily enough online (and if you haven’t read it, I strongly urge to you to so.) What I am going to do is post a snippet of Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration that was so radical it was ultimately struck from the final draft by his peers in Congress, despite his protests.

So–without further ado–I give you Thomas Jefferson on King George III and slavery:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating

it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of

a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying

them to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable

death in their transportations thither. This piratical warfare,

the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian

king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where MEN

should be bought & sold

If you live in Texas and you aren’t a glossy-eyed revisionist historian, I strongly suggest that now is the time to invest yourself heavily in local politics.